


It's in the ABCs of growing up

by EponineTheStrange (gallifreyandglowclouds)



Category: Doctor Who RPF
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-06
Updated: 2013-06-06
Packaged: 2017-12-14 04:08:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/832551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gallifreyandglowclouds/pseuds/EponineTheStrange
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Karen has become a famous actress and not spoken to Matt in 2 years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's in the ABCs of growing up

Karen’s new film premieres at the Edinburgh Film Festival, and it’s kind of fun because she counts that as where things started, because  _Not Another Happy Ending_ premiered there and that’s when things really, really got going for her.

She honestly had no idea that Matt was going to be there. She hasn’t been paying that much attention to his career, and that his new biopic of Sir Ian McKellen was also premiering at the Edinburgh film festival. That is, until she runs in to him at a party on the first night of screenings. _  
_

He gives her a blank stare for a couple seconds, and she almost can’t believe that it’s him either. Then he downs his drink, and if she hadn’t finished that last glass of champagne thirty seconds earlier she probably would do the same.

“Matt,” she says, almost too shocked to speak. 

“Karen,” he says, “lovely to see you.” He then gets up and walks away. 

_Oh fuck._

* * *

She doesn’t buy the explanation that it’s her fault that their friendship fell apart - he’s allowed to call her too, and he had her phone number in Los Angeles and her Skype and every possible way to get in touch with her. But as soon as she moved away, as soon as they got more than twenty feet apart for an extended period of time, they pretty much both stopped caring. 

Well, she didn’t, not exactly, but it wasn’t friendly caring. It was romantic caring, and seeing as he was connected to a string of girls in the wake of her departure from  _Doctor Who,_ she sort of figured that any hints that he might have felt the same way about her were just Matt flirting and being Matt. 

There are hard feelings though, make no mistake. She’s been very good at hiding them.

There have been guys in the two years she’s been gone, but they don’t have silly enough socks or they don’t have nice cheekbones, and about a month ago, she realised that she’s still subconsciously comparing everyone to Matt, and she doesn’t know whether she needs psychological help or what. 

But suddenly, knowing that Matt is close by starts to stir up those feelings she had so artfully boxed away. Karen’s trouble sensor is beeping off the charts. 

Her trouble sensor is incredibly accurate. She generally ignores it, and that probably explains a lot. 

* * *

The next time she runs in to him, it’s just out and about in Edinburgh, and she’s wearing ridiculous sunglasses to try and dodge the camera flashes and interestingly enough, so is he. 

He walks out of a Sainsbury’s with some Jammie Dodgers, and something about that comforts her. She runs to catch up with him. 

“Hey, Matt,” she says, and he turns around suddenly. It could be that his aviators give her no gauge for his eyes, but he doesn’t look terribly impressed to see her. 

“Hi Karen,” he says flatly, and keeps on walking. She tries to match him stride for stride. 

“How are you?” 

“Fine.” 

Well, he’s not really giving her a ton to work with, and she starts seriously regretting catching up to him. 

“You haven’t called me Karen to my face since sometime in 2011.” 

“I don’t really feel like it’s appropriate to call you nicknames, seeing as we aren’t really friends.” 

Oh, right. “No reason why we can’t work towards that again.” 

He shrugs. “I guess so. I’m staying here.” He turns in to a nearby building, and she loses him again. 

Yeah, he’s right, isn’t he? 

* * *

She doesn’t know whether his phone number is going to be the same or not, because he’s been doing movies on both sides of the pond since he left  _Doctor Who,_ but she finds his number still in her contacts list so she tries to send him a text. 

_Can we talk? I feel like talking would be useful._

She lies back on the bed in her hotel room, and waits for a response from him that she’s not sure will actually come. 

_I don’t know, Karen. We’ve had two years to talk, and that hasn’t happened._

She rolls her eyes at that.

_Well, there are clearly unresolved feelings here, and I feel like we can’t get past it if we don’t talk_

_Maybe I don’t want to get past it_

Oh, for fuck’s sake, Matt. 

_Well, if you feel like not being an asshole, I’m staying at the Balmoral and I don’t have anything tonight and there’s a nice bar. Meet me at eight._

* * *

She is ninety percent sure he’s not going to show, but she figures that there are other people involved with the festival staying there, so maybe she’ll meet someone else who isn’t stupid and broody and English. 

When Karen gets down to the bar at 8:05, he’s there, and this was not the result that she was expecting. 

She sits down beside him at the bar. He orders a beer; she gets a cosmo because she is feeling utterly ridiculous.

“So,” he says, “You’ve been on quite the career ascent lately.”

She shrugs, because that’s not something she really talks about unless someone is interviewing her about it. “Yeah, it’s been interesting.” 

“Well, I always thought you’d get there. And that spot on Community…” 

“Okay, that was fun,” Karen says. 

They make awkwardly polite small-talk for the remainder of the evening, covering such enlightening topics such as actors they’ve both worked with over the past couple of years (basically concluding that Jenna is the most massive sweetheart to exist on the planet) but not really scraping the surface of the ridiculous tension between the two of them. 

Then they run out of things to talk about, and that’s when the trouble begins. 

“What happened, Matt?” 

“To what?” 

“To us.” 

He stares in to the bottom of his empty glass like it’s going to tell him secrets if he stares hard enough. “I seem to remember that you left and never looked back.” 

“And did you lose your phone or your computer?” She can feel heat rising to her cheeks. “Because I’m pretty sure that it takes two to keep a friendship going.” 

“You called twice. Twice!” 

“I was sick of being the one initiating things,” Karen says. “I thought you weren’t interested anymore. I mean, with all of those girls…” 

“Oh, don’t,” Matt says angrily. “They weren’t you, Karen. So yeah, maybe I went overboard but you cannot judge me for that. But I wanted you, and all I was getting was nothing.” He throws a few notes down on the table and gets up. “I’m done here.” 

He storms off, and people start to stare, and Karen doesn’t know what to do except for follow him out of the hotel and on to the street. 

“Fucks sake, Matt,” Karen says, running after him. He does, to his credit, turn around when she catches up to him (no small feat in heels). “Are you telling me that you were in love with me this whole time?” 

He nods, and throws his hands up in defeat. “I thought I’d shown it to you as well, Karen, but apparently it hadn’t been that clear.” 

Her head is spinning and her mouth is a little bit dry, because honestly she thought the same thing about him, and now there’s a gulf of two years between them and she’s starting to think that she wants to fix things, but doesn’t know if it’s too late or not. 

“Matt, I’m so sorry,” she says quietly, and that seems to make his eyes soften a little and the anger disappears a little. 

“I know, and I guess I am too,” he says, looking down at the pavement. 

“What happens now?” Karen says, because suddenly she’s scared that he’s going to walk away and she does not want that to happen. 

“Kaz,” he says, and the sound of her old nickname breaks her heart in to little fragments, “I can’t do this right now. I - I - just can’t.” 

He turns around and walks away, and she’s paralysed and doesn’t run after him. 

* * *

She sees him a few more times at festival events and screenings that she has to go to, but it’s all from across the room. She gives him wistful, significant looks that he does not return, and she sort of gets the idea that he’s pretending that she doesn’t exist.

That fucking hurts, especially now that she knows things the like the fact that he was probably just as besotted with her as she was with him before she left for Los Angeles. She spends a lot of time staring at the walls and ceiling of her hotel room, thinking that she’d give up all the fame and fortune and glamour if it would give her another chance to be with him.

At the final gala of the festival, she tries to approach him, but he keeps shaking her off, and she finally thinks that it’s over.

* * *

The next morning, Karen packs her suitcase, because she’s off to Morocco for a television series that she’s doing. Her heart is heavy, though, and she wishes that she didn’t have to go, because she knows better what she’s leaving behind.

Then she gets a text from Matt, and when she sees it she very nearly drops her phone.

_I’m waiting in your hotel lobby, and I’ll buy you breakfast if you’d like to talk._

Half of her wants to sprint down there, but she ends up walking down there relatively calmly. He’s sitting on a couch, and when she walks up to him, they walk together wordlessly over to a table in the hotel’s restaurant.

There’s a lot of awkward not looking at each other and fidgeting before Matt finally looks Karen straight in the eyes and says, “I’m sorry.”

“I don’t think that you have anything to be sorry for,” she says quietly. 

“It was kind of a dick move on my part to completely ignore you after that conversation we had a couple of days ago.”

Karen shrugs and looks away from him. “Yeah, I was mad about that, but I kind of understood why that was something you might have wanted to do.” She pauses briefly, and then says, “Matt, can we start over?”

To her great pleasure and surprise, he nods.

“I don’t want to jump right in to a romantic relationship,” Matt says, and that makes sense to Karen, because they’ve got two years of catching up to do. “We might get there, and god knows I’d be happy if we did. But let’s start as friends, okay?”

He reaches across the table, and she reaches back and holds his hand, and it feels like old times again.

Breakfast isn’t bad, and she even persuades him to help her carry her suitcases from her room to her waiting taxi.

“I’ll call you when I get to Marrakesh, okay?” She says, and he nods.

“I’ll miss you, “ he says, then kisses her on the forehead gently. “See you when I see you, Kazza.”

He’s got a bit of a skip in his step as he walks away.

Karen’s just comforted by the fact that even though she’s not sure when she’s going to see him again, she will see him again. That’s good enough for her. 


End file.
